Through all this, Wyatt guided and coddled the bay, soothing the steed, taking it easy with the reins so that the animal didn’t get spooked by the lightning flashes and celestial whip cracks. New York’s two most unlikely milkmen were glad to be within the metal cab of the Droste Dairy wagon; still, enough water was making it in that Wyatt covered with newspaper the long-barreled Colt .45 on the bench beside him.
Back behind, Bat and his little revolver were dry as toast, but the thunder had an unsettling way of echoing within the wagon, and the spattering of raindrops made a steady overhead tap dance, not quite deafening but damned distracting.
They made their steady, leisurely way in and around the trucks and the men scurrying in the street, sometimes getting an irritated glance at their splash of hooves, as if people belonged there more than any lousy milk wagon. Just a few blocks down the warehouses took over, with no activity to speak of, though the Washington Market din continued to compete with the thunderstorm.
Soon Bat had hopped out, finally getting well and truly wet as he unlocked the big doors and swung one open, and slipped inside as Wyatt guided the bay into the vast warehouse, the horse’s clips and clops on the cement providing counterpoint to the drumming rain on the roof, which echoed through the empty space in relentless, monotonous rhythm.
Bat closed them in and walked over to the massive false wall, wet footsteps following him, found the rope handle in the indentation in the wood, and swung open half of it. As usual Wyatt positioned the horse with the back of the wagon to the opening, and the two water-dripping men in black caps, white blouses, black trousers and white work gloves began selecting crates.
Wyatt selected one of the two sets of portable metal steps to allow Bat to climb up and take crates off the first row, but from the other side, in the first of six aisles within the formidable collection of crates. Each tier of wooden boxes was a good nine feet tall, so using the steps was a necessity. Even at his six feet plus, Wyatt couldn’t have easily plucked one off the top; and Bat was almost a head shorter.
The procedure—this would represent their third delivery in as many weeks—took longer than Wyatt had expected. The crates of each variety of liquor tended to be stacked together—all of the Scotch, all of the bourbon, and so on—so the two men had to move the wheeled steps around, here and there, working off a shifting shopping list Johnny had provided.
They did not transfer each crate directly to the rear of the wagon; instead, they hauled each clinking crate out into the open area past the aisle, and then would finally load up for delivery. That neither man was a kid anymore, and that both had their share of sciatica, did not speed the process.
Today was Friday. They were, as Wyatt had suggested, varying their delivery, avoiding a pattern. First had been Monday, then Wednesday.
Business continued to boom at Holliday’s, the week nights steady, the weekends wild. Yale’s people continued their watch, even now with the third week since re-opening almost over. And Wyatt’s own bankroll, while in no danger of rivaling Arnold Rothstein’s, was growing steadily. His net thus far approached ten thousand dollars.
Even the women were behaving themselves. On his most recent phone call to Sadie, she had agreed to come out at the start of June, if all still was going well. Tex, hearing this, laid off on the flirting, though their friendship continued apace. Johnny and Dix remained a happy little cooing couple. And, best of all, Kate had spent only two days at the club, having come to reluctant terms with her son’s chosen path, even accepting Wyatt’s return of her five hundred plus the expense money and a hundred-buck self-imposed penalty, before heading back to Arizona.
Wyatt had not been privy to Johnny’s conversations with his mother, but Doc’s wife and son were openly affectionate by the time she left. This was in part due to a small conspiracy involving all concerned, to keep Mama from learning of the threat posed by Yale and Capone.
Had Kate known about the incident at Coney Island, and all it entailed and connoted, Doc’s better half would no doubt still be around…and on the warpath.
These thoughts had just trailed through Wyatt’s mind as he set a case of Scotch atop another of gin when a thunderclap shook him…
…only it was no thunderclap, rather the metal doors of the warehouse being flung wide and hard enough for them to slam ringingly against the walls.
Bat was just approaching with a crate of whiskey in his gloved hands as Wyatt, yanking the long-barreled Colt from his waistband, moved forward only to see and hear one dark sedan sweep in, and then another, new shiny rain-pearled black Fords that screeched to sudden, angular stops.
The bay reared and whinnied, head flung side to side, nostrils flaring, eyes huge and afraid, front hooves pawing, striking the air, as the curly-headed Capone crony in a black rain slicker and rain-dripping black fedora slammed shut the big metal doors and the bald one (though his black fedora concealed that baldness) jumped out of the nearest Ford, on the rider’s side, a tommy gun in hand.
“Take cover,” Wyatt said, and Bat—who had already set the crate on top of others put aside for loading—ducked back into the nearest aisle.
“Over there!” the bald guy said, cradling the tommy gun under his right arm and pointing at Wyatt with his free hand, his thin upper lip peeled back over his teeth in a sick, satisfied smile. The curly-haired hood was on the run, a big automatic in his mitt as he rushed to join his pal, and both drivers were climbing out, a skinny one and a squat one, making it four hoods in black fedoras and matching slickers, and everybody had guns.
So did Wyatt, of course, but he didn’t fire his, not yet—he slipped behind the small pile of set-aside crates, and assessed the situation. Only half of that fake wall exposed them, and the nervous horse was blocking that space, though not for long, Wyatt figured: the severely spooked animal was no longer rearing, but seemed ready to run, despite the lack of an exit, probably heeding its instinct to return to its stable.
The snorting, neighing horse moved headlong toward the curly-headed hood, who got spooked himself and started firing at the oncoming animal. The bay took the shots in the head and neck and instantly went down in a thousand-pound pile, taking the wagon with it in a sickening thump of horseflesh and ear-rending crash of metal and wood.
This put the dead, fallen animal in the way of the intruders, half-barring the opening onto the storehouse, and in the following few moments of confusion, Wyatt yelled to Bat, “Lay some fire down!”
Bat, in the first aisle, up the portable steps, leaning on the top row of crates, poised like the defender of a fort, began shooting his revolver at the intruders, whose first reaction was to scurry out of the way, but for the driver of the second Ford, the skinny sharp-nosed character who caught one in the knee and, as he was doing the resultant awkward dance, took another in the head, leaving a bloody mist behind as he stopped dancing and fell.
A hood yelled “Bastards,” just another sound among the many, the rain continuing its own artillery onslaught, thunder adding occasional cannon fire.
At the same time, Wyatt had run from behind the pile of crates to that fake half-wall, that big open door giving their adversaries a view of them and the liquor repository, and as Bat’s bullets flew overhead, the sharp cracks standing out like hail in the rainstorm, Wyatt—slipping a little in the horse’s blood but maintaining his footing—put his back against the wooden door and reached one hand around and grasped its handle, that inset loop of rope, and with his other hand gripped the door’s edge and pulled it shut, fingers of his other hand keeping hold of the rope, so that it squeezed through the space between the shut doors; then, as Bat’s gunfire ceased, Wyatt hooked the rope over a handle on the inside of the other door.
And ran back to his pile of crates.
The two men, temporarily at least, were shut inside—the dead animal, the fallen wagon, one dead hoodlum, and three live (heavily armed) ones on the other side of the massive wooden doors.
The hoods were yelling at each other in the outer w
arehouse, unintelligible echoing, as Wyatt joined Bat in the aisle and said, “Is there a way out?”
Bat, still at the top of the metal steps, revolver in hand, quickly scanned the possibilities. “Those windows, maybe?”
A high row of painted-out black windows were on the rear wall.
“Even with these steps,” Wyatt said, “we can’t get up there—and anyway, it’s a story-and-a-half drop.”
From his perch, Bat surveyed the walls. “No door,” he said, though they’d already known that.
Something, a shoulder probably, smashed against the juncture of the doors, straining the loop of rope.
Wyatt aimed down the long barrel at where the doors met, but above the rope-wound handle, and on the next ramming, fired off a round, wood chips flying.
“Shit!” somebody on the other side said.
Moments later, like a nasty parody of the hammering rain, the machine gun ripped into the doors at that crucial juncture and chunks of wood flew and the rope took a hit but held on by a few threads.
The tommy-gun fire let up—Wyatt figured the shooter was changing magazines—and he said to Bat, “You’re fine right there,” and scrambled around to the third aisle, where awaited the other set of metal steps, which he positioned just down from Bat to the left, and climbed and took his post at the top of the fortress of booze.
Another thunderous flurry of lead was unleashed on the doors and more wood flew and the rope threads were obliterated and two men came shouldering through, doors bursting open, the pair of hoods making way for the bald machine gunner who came in blasting, stitching bullets across the upper half of the first wall of crates, wood splintering, bottles cracking, liquor leaching.
Bat, trying for another head shot, managed only to take the machine gunner’s fedora off, revealing his pink fleshy dome; but it scared the son of a bitch, and as the shooter backed up, losing his footing in the bay’s blood, bumping against the dead horse, a wild spray of slugs sent his two cronies scurrying in opposite directions as he literally slipped back into the outer warehouse.
Despite the slapstick of seeing the one thug slip-sliding and the others ducking their own boy’s bullets, this had served to send the adversaries deeper into the storehouse, the curly-haired hood going to the left of the stacked crates, the squat joker to the right. From his position Wyatt saw each man streak by, and took a shot at both, twisting to do it, not succeeding with either round.
Confident Wyatt would watch his back, Bat kept his eyes on that opening, which yawned fairly wide now; the machine gunner was out of sight, either snugged on the other side of one big door, or crouched down using the horse carcass and overturned wagon as a barrier behind which to reload and cogitate.
In the meantime, in his own aisle, Wyatt had shoved the steps closer to the rearward row of crates, and climbed up them, and crawled onto the two-carton-deep stack to lie horizontally, belly down, and get a view of empty aisle four. Carefully, with some difficulty—not wanting to stick the .45 in his waistband even for a moment or two—he managed to drop down into that aisle, landing nice and soft.
He moved to the left, staying low, the long barrel of the gun in his right hand making of his very arm a rifle. Silent as a Sioux, he made his way to the end of the aisle, hurtled around to aisle five with the weapon ready to fire…
…but aisle five was empty.
He repeated the process, but headed right this time, and came around into aisle six, only to find it empty, as well.
This meant the two hoods had to be between the last wall of crates and the rear wall of the warehouse itself. Nowhere else for them to be.
He moved along aisle six, slowly, haltingly, pausing to listen.
Gunfire had, for an unsettling full minute or more, given over performance privileges to the pounding rain. Loud as the declamatory downpour was, with its punctuation of thunder, he could hear something else, somebody, somebodies, whispering.
With the position of his adversaries established, Wyatt smiled grimly to himself.
With some reluctance, he shoved the .45 into his waistband, and he reached up, as if surrendering, his hands finding the top crate on the stack.
And he shoved.
The two crates, butted against each other, went for a ride to come down hard on the two unseen men, whose cries of surprise and pain took any doubt away about their location, emphasized by the clatter of crates on concrete, and Wyatt emptied his Colt into the pine wood and the bullets crashed through, breaking glass, wasting liquor, and, judging by the howls, finding their intended targets.
Quickly he reloaded—his milkman’s left jacket pocket was filled with cartridges—and came around to see what he’d accomplished.
Under the two broken-open crates, with shattered bottles of Scotch spilling fragrantly onto the floor, the two hoodlums lay. The squat character had a bullet in the head as he lay sprawled face-up atop the curly-headed one, who was wounded, arm and gut for sure, though the fat thug and the two busted crates and the scattered liquor somewhat obscured the view.
“Son of a bitch,” the curly-haired hood muttered.
Wyatt wasn’t sure whether this was an insult or merely an expression of displeasure, and didn’t ask, before shooting the man in the head.
“Two down!” Wyatt called.
“No sign of Baldy!” Bat called back.
Bat and Wyatt could only speculate how this exchange had fueled the remaining hood—perhaps he was outraged or saddened, learning of the demise of his co-workers; or maybe he didn’t like to have his hairlessness bandied about in so loose a manner.
At any rate, Wyatt had barely peeked out of the aisle when the tommy gunner came bounding through the gaping opening, into the storeroom, screaming as if he were on fire, but he was the one laying down fire, opening up with that tommy in sweeping, frenzied arcs.
Bat ducked back so quickly he came rattling bump bump bump bumping down the metal stairs and landed with no grace whatsoever on his ass; and, simultaneously, Wyatt dove back into the nearest aisle, number five.
The sounds this last man was generating—from his own war-party screams to the insistent barrage of bullets to the crack and crunch of splintering wood and the shattering glass of bottles—formed a mad symphony of destruction and rage, and Wyatt, with his own .45 up against a weapon that could spit .45 slugs back at him at a rate of fifteen hundred rounds a minute, wondered if his time had, at last, come.
He was not afraid; he had never been afraid in a gunfight, and his coolness, his steadiness, remained the eternal ace up his sleeve. So he told himself not to let a little noise unsettle him, and slipped out of the aisle and around behind, where the two dead hoodlums lay in a pool of bloody liquor and scattered pine.
As the mechanical chatter of the tommy continued counterpointing the bald bastard’s banshee wail, along with the sad sound of shattering glass and snapping wood, Bat—wishing to hell he knew where Wyatt was, and what his friend was up to, but not daring give away either of their positions—got to his feet in the aisle and did his best to sort out where exactly the cacophony was coming from.
The shooter seemed to have moved from the doorway and off to the left. My God, the wood was flying! So were shards of glass, and the liquor gave off a pungent, medical aroma laced with cordite that in such quantity, not to mention circumstances, downright stank.
Bat was crouching, sensing that he should move left, when the tommy gunner appeared at the mouth of the aisle at left, and bullets went flying Bat’s way, as the shooter’s screechy scream went up a note or two, and Bat dove as if the floor were an inviting pool, which it wasn’t, unless wood and glass and booze was your idea of inviting.…
Bat crawled around the corner into the next aisle and then was on his feet, running, hoping to come around and get the guy, but the gunner anticipated him, and the shrieking son of a bitch unleashed another hail of bullets, and Bat hit the floor and rolled, no wood or glass or liquor in this aisle—yet. When the gunner got through, though, there’d be pl
enty.…
And then the shooting stopped.
The son of a bitch was out of ammo.
Bat cut back around aisle three, to blindside the bastard, but Wyatt’s gunfire, from the rear wall, drove the gunner back toward Bat.
Again Bat scrambled down an aisle, this time heading toward the rear wall, where Wyatt had been.
The machine-gunning started in again—must not have taken the boy long to shove a new magazine in—but at least the screaming had stopped.
Only that was bad.
Good for the ears, but bad every other way, because the more out of control the gunner was, the better their chances were. If the hood had his mind clear and his deadly purpose in focus, then Bat and Wyatt had real trouble; after all, they were seriously outgunned by this bird.…
By now the entire stockpile of liquor had been sprayed with bullets, and as the noise of cracking wood and breaking glass continued, the world of the warehouse, this section of it anyway, became a stench-ridden, booze-sodden, wood-chunk-cluttered obstacle course.
And when Bat got to the rear wall, he found the ghastly remains of the other two hoods, but no Wyatt.
Then he realized the relentless pummeling of gunfire was coming his way. He dropped to his knees, getting them wet in spilled liquor, using the two fallen hoodlums and the broken crates littering them for cover.
How desperate this was, Bat had scant time to consider, though he knew that chatter-gun could chop right through his modest man-wood-and-glass barricade.
When the bald gunner rounded the corner, still spraying slugs, Bat took aim and fired twice, and the guy, not hit but startled, pulled back, letting up on the trigger.
Black Hats Page 21